Biology eAcademy: SmartScience Demonstration & Exploration

History of SmartScience - http://www.smartscience.net/SmartScience/SmartScience.html

English: Students completing a lab experiment in Fisher Hall. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What makes a great science lab experience? Edmund Hall wrote a book on science on teaching science - gave an ideal vision.  A good experience:

• Proper background and context
• Inquiry style learning
• Data measurement and analysis "hands on"
• After the lab, cement the learning
• Accessible and effective

SmartScience as a choice, what it can do

• It will not do everything you want it to do but it will do what it does well.
• Students choose an experiment
• Allows students to create a hypothesis
• Analyze results and write a report

SmartScience and the CSU

• Offering virtual labs for a number of possibilities - use them for what you need them for
• An online lab keeps the sensibilities of real science
• Customizes lab experience per professor
• Some analytics

How It Works

SmartScience is is in Java and is now in an HTML 5 version that is mobile and tablet friendly.

Each module has a reading, warm-up questions (to prepare the student for the lab), the students watch a video, they then make a hypothesis (they can add hypothesis), they then watch a video that gives them the results of the experiment, students can click on the screen to make selections and gather data, the data is automatically plotted. The method asks the students to analyze the data to see if their hypotheses were supported. There is a final assessment - multiple choice questions about the data. The assessments are automatically corrected and will include feedback. The students write a lab report. The students writing and assessments are bundled up into a .pdf for the instructor.

Students can also decide to perform the experiments at home, upload their data, and a picture.

Instructors can pre-write hypotheses.

Built in vocabulary (glossary) tool.

Each lab includes a profile of a scientist.

One instructor asks the students to keep working on their lab reports until they get an A.

Let us know if you want to be in the pilot - there is one in the CSU

Supply them with name, campus, courses - they will then create a campus site for us.

The instructors create their own course pages. Faculty can look at the data from the experiment, the reports and assessments. Teachers then can add scores and comments.

Discussion - an instructor points out that the images need to not be orphaned. They need a legend and figure description. 

Biology eAcademy: Further Discussions on Teaching with Simulations

Students in the incubation room at the Woodbine Agricultural School, New Jersey (Photo credit: Center for Jewish History, NYC)

The group seems to have come to a consensus tha tthe online "labs" are really simulations and not labs. They can meet the same outcomes as labs though. Bob G. is not sure that the simulations in BiologyLabsOnline and ScienceCourseWare.org should be for more advanced students. Paul said that it is an experiment. They have used this with non-majors for three years with some success. There was a paper written that shows the program used with Middle School students.

Nathan A. has used the fly lab since 1995. He found it useful and the students found it challenging. He used it in a junior level genetics course to map genes. The key to the success is the support materials. The "teaching commons" will be an important piece in getting the right curriculum to the right students. He also like the report feature. It is a good exercise in how to create a lab report. They suggest creating a stand alone program just for lab reports.

Some of the exercises presented are complex, but instructors should be able to scaffold the experiments to help the students through the work. The preparation of materials takes time because there is a self-guided aspect to some of the online learning.

The discussion really speaks to the fear that somehow online learning will eliminate instructors but what we have seen here is that the role of the instructor as a guide through the experiments is essential. The creation of materials, the design of accompanying assignments, focusing the assessmemts all require a high level of faculty engagement.

Michael C. suggested that we create modular tools that would allow us to create our own experiments.